Re: More ET foam woes

In article <153ep15rucnibfpa6ul7jbtstm2d7k1jgl@xxxxxxx>,
Len Lekx <LFLekx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>Peroxide is mother's milk next to nitrogen tetroxide. Peroxide is, in
>>fact, about as close as you can get to a harmless strong oxidizer.
>
> Then why, for curiositys' sake, are people so fearful of it?

It got a bad reputation in the US in particular because of some early bad
experiences, mostly associated with *impure* peroxide. The stuff *will*
behave badly if you don't keep it clean, and this wasn't well understood
in early post-WW2 experimental work. The result was a large body of
superstition which persists to this day.

It was used very successfully in rocketry by the British, who realized
early that they had to pay careful attention to purity, and had no great
trouble with it.

NASA and the USAF used it successfully in the X-15, the rocket-boosted
NF-104, and a number of spacecraft including the Mercury capsule. (This
never gets mentioned by the people who tell the horror stories.)

More recently, Armadillo Aerospace <http://www.armadilloaerospace.com>
used it extensively in the work they did on their X-Prize entry, and would
be using it still -- and would have had at least a fighting chance at the
X-Prize -- were it not for supply problems.

(High-concentration peroxide, especially seriously pure high-concentration
peroxide, is not easy to get commercially; the only user-friendly supplier
died as a side effect of the demise of Beal Aerospace. The remaining US
sources are part of the government-contractor empire and aren't interested
in commercial business. Purifying/concentrating the stuff yourself is not
entirely simple, and some of the obvious ways of doing it are dangerous.)
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. | henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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